Magic Mirror Features Sam

The feature where I share a glimpse into my fiction — welcome to Magic Mirror! I pin all my Magic Mirror entries on Pinterest. Feel free to browse my collections. They are sorted by book title.

Magic Mirror Presents: Sam // The Tale of Mally Biddle

I’m a big fan of heroines having awesome horses. My favorite part of BRAVE was the horse.

I had very particular traits in mind for Mally’s horse. Mally comes from a farming town, so her horse needed to be a worker and less for travel. I wanted him to be powerful, strong, imposing, intimidating, and regal. These are all the traits that come to mind when I think of draft horses. It also was a positive for him to be so different from Leah’s horse Iris from The Unicorn Girl. Iris was very delicate and dance-like (think Arabian). I wanted Sam to be masculine and very war-like.

I did some research (as in Google search) to find out how tall draft horses typically are. This led me to the Shire horse, pictured above. They can grow to become enormous sizes (17 to 19 hands!). The tallest recorded so far was 21 hands! They are incredible work horses that can pull staggering weights.

When I landed upon the photo above, I thought, yes! That’s Sam! I love how the horse looks like he’s on his off day, exactly how Sam spends most of his time.

Excerpt from the book:

“Remember our bargain?” Bayard shot at Mally, his fist clenched on Sam’s reigns.

Mally nodded and Bayard lifted himself and swung his leg up and over. The moment he had settled, Sam let out an almighty neigh and reared. Bayard yelled in surprise and clutched the reigns as the knights quickly stumbled backward, shouting encouragement. But Sam wouldn’t listen to Bayard or the knights’ orders. He flattened his ears against his skull, snorted like a bull and dived forward into a wild gallop. Mally, Bob, the stable hands, and the knights stood transfixed as Bayard tried to control Sam. Then quite suddenly, Sam came to an abrupt, jerking stop. Bayard flew over Sam’s head to land with a loud thud in a large mud puddle.

Sam trotted around Bayard to stand, wriggling his ears in a disgruntled way, beside Mally.

“I’m so sorry, Sir Adrian!” Mally yelled over the howling laughter from the other knights, her voice full of false concern. “Are you all right?”

Cursing under his breath, Bayard stood back up, shaking mud off his hands.

“Blasted beast!” he snarled.

“The miss did warn you, sir,” Bob piped up, grinning from ear to ear.

“I can ride any horse!” Bayard shouted and Sam’s ears flattened again against his head.

“But, sir, Sam isn’t any horse,” Mally replied, her voice as sweet and innocent as a child’s.